The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

have introduced a way of speaking, by which the property and the usufruct are distinguished; but in truth, the usufructuary has a temporary or limited property, and the proprietary has a perpetual usufruct, either at present, or in reversion. Propriety without the use (if the use is never come to the proprietary) is an empty sound.

I have before, upon some occasions, taken it as granted, that he who uses anything as his, when it is not his, acts against truth, etc., but now I say further, that,

XIII. He who uses or disposes of anything, does by that declare it to be his. Because this is all that he, whose it really is, can do. Borrowing and hiring afford no objection to this. When the borrower or hirer uses the thing borrowed or hired, he uses what is his own for the time allowed, and his doing so is only one of those ways in which the true proprietary disposes of it.

XIV. To usurp or invade the property of another man is injustice: or, more fully, to take, detain, use, destroy, hurt, or meddle370 with anything that is his without his allowance, either by force or fraud or any other way, or even to attempt any of these, or assist them who do, are acts of injustice. The contrary⁠—to render and permit quietly to everyone what is his⁠—is justice. Definition.

XV. He that would not violate truth, must avoid all injustice: or, all injustice is wrong and evil. It interferes with the truths371 here before laid down, and perhaps more. It denies men to be subjects capable of distinct properties; in some cases it denies them to have a property even in their own bodies, life, fame, and the like; the practice of it is incompatible with the peace and happiness of mankind; it is what every man thinks unreasonable in his own case, when the injury is done to himself; to take anything from another only because I think I want it, or because I have power to take it and will have it, without any title to it, is the highest pretence to dominion, and denial of our natural equality; it is setting up a right to begin to disturb the happiness of others; and lastly, it is to deny there is any such thing as property, contrary to truth.

Briefly, if there be anything which P can truly and properly call his, then, if T takes or uses it without the consent of P, he declares it to be his (for if it was his he could do no more) when it is not his, and so acts a lie,372 in which consists the idea and formal ratio of moral evil.

The very attempting any instance of injustice, or assisting others in such an attempt, since it is attempting and promoting what is wrong, is being in the wrong as much as one is able to be, or doing what one can to achieve that which is evil, and to do this, by the terms, must be wrong and evil.

Even the desire of obtaining anything unjustly is evil: because to desire to do evil, by the terms again, is an evil or criminal desire. If the act follows such a desire, it is the child and product of it; and the desire, if anything renders the fulfilling of it impracticable, is the act obstructed in the beginning and stifled in the womb.

Let it be observed here, by way of scholion concerning the thing called “covetousness,” that there seem to be three sorts of it. One is this here mentioned: a desire of getting from others, though it be unjustly. This is wrong and wicked. Another is an immense desire of heaping up what one can, by just methods, but without any reasonable end proposed,373 and only in order to keep,374 and, as it were, bury it;375 and the more he accumulates, the more he craves.376 This also entrenches upon truth, and seems to be a vice. But to covet to obtain what is another man’s, by just means and with his consent, when it may contribute to the happiness of ourselves or families, and perhaps of the other person too, has nothing surely that looks unfriendly upon truth, or is blameable, in it. This, if it may be called covetousness, is a virtuous covetousness.

XVI. When a man cares not what sufferings he causes to others, and especially if he delights in other men’s sufferings and makes them his sport, this is what I call cruelty. And not to be affected with the sufferings of other people, though they proceed not from us, but from others or from causes in which we are not concerned, is unmercifulness. Mercy and humanity are the reverse of these.

XVII. He, who religiously regards truth and nature, will not only be not unjust, but (more) not unmerciful, and much less cruel. Not to be affected with the afflictions of others, so far as we know them, and in proportion to the several degrees and circumstances of them, though we are not the causes of them, is the same as to consider the afflicted as persons not in affliction: that is, as being not what they are, or (which is the same) as being what they are not⁠—and this contradicts matter of fact.

One can scarce know the sufferings of another without having at least some image of them in his mind: nor can one have these images without being conscious of them and, as it were, feeling them. Next to suffering itself is to carry the representation of it about with one. So that he who is not affected with the calamities of others, so far as they fall within his knowledge, may be said to know and not to know, or at least to cancel his knowledge, and contradict his own